[Volumen Thesium theologicarum per locos communes disputatarum in academia Franequerana; (Franekerae: Uld. Balck, 1639)]
Johannes Maccovius (c. 1588–1644), born Jan Makowski in the year of our Lord 1588 in Lobzenic, Great Poland, emerged as a radiant star in the firmament of Reformed scholastic theology. Of noble Polish lineage, he was nurtured in learning first at the gymnasium of Danzig under the tutelage of the renowned Bartholomaeus Keckermann, wherein he laid a strong foundation in the arts and the philosophy of Aristotle. Ever zealous for wisdom, he journeyed as a peregrinus academicus through the academies of Germany, including Prague, Marburg, Heidelberg, and Leipzig, before at length attaining the celebrated University of Franeker in Friesland. At Franeker he attained his doctorate in sacred theology in 1614, being speedily advanced to the office of professor ordinarius, where he exercised his gifts for near thirty years. Maccovius did tenaciously defend the purity of Reformed doctrine, being noted for his supralapsarian convictions concerning predestination and for his subtlety in scholastic method, wherein he was esteemed above many. With keen intellect and ardent zeal, he contended for the faith against Jesuits, Socinians, Arminians, and all adversaries of orthodox Calvinism. His disputations were many, and his classes thronged with students from Poland, Hungary, Transylvania, and beyond, whom he instructed with rigor and piety. Throughout his course he was not without controversy: his method, logical distinctions, and strong assertions occasioned strife, notably with Sibrandus Lubbertus and William Ames, as well as censure at the Synod of Dordrecht. Yet he was acquitted of heresy and confirmed in his teaching. His principal works, Collegium Theologicum and Distinctiones et Regulae Theologicae, endure as monuments of Protestant learning. Having completed his pilgrimage, he fell asleep in Christ at Franeker in 1644, leaving an enduring legacy among the Reformed.
Table of Contents:
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THESIS I. Reprobation is the eternal decree of God, whereby God from eternity, out of His mere good pleasure, wills to leave certain fallen ones in their fall and to damn them eternally.
THESIS II. Sin is not therefore the cause of reprobation.
There is contention concerning this among the fathers, for some teach that sin is absolutely the cause of reprobation, while others distinguish and say that reprobation ought to be distinguished into negative and positive, and they assert that sin is indeed the cause of the latter, but not of the former. But both err, because no cause can be given for God’s decree or divine will, as we have shown before in our doctrine concerning decrees in general. Here we add this particular reason, which Twissus urges:
“The merits of Christ are as powerful for predestination as are anyone’s sins for reprobation, but not even the merits of Christ are the cause of the predestination of the elect, as we have shown before; therefore neither are sins the cause of reprobation.”
But certain things are brought forward to the contrary, which must be resolved:
It is therefore objected that:
“Scripture establishes, when it reprobated Esau, that it hated him; therefore on account of sin, for God hates no one except on account of sin.”
Response: Theologians distinguish hatred into negative hatred and positive hatred. By positive hatred, they say, God hates no one except a sinner, but by negative hatred He can hate even one who has not sinned; namely, when He does not will eternal life for him, which He wills for another.
Cameron falls into this distinction in his Myrothecium page 192:
“There are those,” he says, “who explain that ‘I hated’ means ‘I did not love,’ privatively not positively, and they say there is a twofold hatred, one privative, the other positive. But they do not seem to have sufficiently attended to the nature of God (to say nothing meanwhile that Scripture is entirely ignorant of this privative hatred, when it deals with the hatred with which God pursues the reprobate), for we humans indeed hate, that is, do not love those like us with privative hatred for three principal causes: 1. Because we do not know them. 2. Because even if we know them, nevertheless we do not always remember them, we do not think about them. 3. Because we often conduct ourselves indifferently toward them. Now it cannot happen that any one of these three should fall upon God, for He cannot not know men, He cannot not remember them, He cannot finally conduct Himself indifferently toward them, since He is omniscient.”
Counter-Response: It cannot be denied that God was unwilling to give eternal life to certain ones, and this from eternity, therefore I do not know why this act cannot be called negative or privative hatred, so that we may designate this act of God’s will by this name. For not to inquire into other things which this most learned man brings forward, this does not seem true, which he adds, that God does not conduct Himself indifferently toward men. For although this might be true concerning men already created, nevertheless this is false if you take it concerning men as they were presented to God’s will in predestination, for it was free to will to give eternal life to these, not likewise to others, so indeed that those whom He destined to salvation, He could have, if it had so pleased Him, destined to condemnation, and those whom He destined to condemnation, to salvation, therefore this accusation is too cold to require that this distinction should be expunged on account of it.
This seems greater, that this hatred cannot be called merely negative. For as Whitaker says excellently in his treatise on predestination:
“The decree,” he says, “of not giving life, of not showing mercy, which the Scholastics not ineptly call Negative Reprobation, but this negation includes an affirmation. For if God decreed not to give life to so many, either He decreed the contrary, or certainly He must be considered to have defined nothing certainly and affirmatively, which cannot be thought except most absurdly. For all men, since they are God’s creatures, must be divinely ordained to their ends. Nor does a sparrow or a hair fall to the ground without God’s will, and shall so many men rush into eternal destruction without God’s decree and will?”
Therefore this hatred can also be called positive, namely when He destined such ones, to whom He was unwilling to give eternal life, to eternal destruction, therefore to the argument brought forward above we respond: God hates none except sinners, if you take hatred for the will to punish, which is in God; but if you take it for the will to destine to destruction, then indeed He could have hated even those who cannot be conceived as sinners, for by this will of God they were destined finally both to destruction and to sin.